


Talking Tom

by hypnagogia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Child Abuse, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Panic Attacks, Possession, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27278440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypnagogia/pseuds/hypnagogia
Summary: Once a year, Harry's only friend would visit him. It would be a short event, lasting from the moment the clock ticked over to midnight to the moment the sun decided to rise, but that was okay—for once a year, he could hear his name uttered without a single speck of disgust, and that was enough.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 10
Kudos: 96
Collections: distractions 💬 halloween big bang 2020





	Talking Tom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonderwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonderwrites/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [sonderwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonderwrites/pseuds/sonderwrites) in the [Distractions_Halloween_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Distractions_Halloween_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  As the clock ticked over to midnight, and October 31st started, every single pumpkin in Britain suddenly became sentient.

The first time he saw the living pumpkin had been an accident.

The night had progressed rather normally, with him waking up from the same nightmare he had had for the last six years, one that always made him found his room—or the cupboard that had acted as one—especially suffocating. He grappled the doorknob despite knowing full well that his aunt had it bolted shut and padlocked, just like she had for every Halloween. He expected himself to pass out and wake up with a sharp tug on his left ear, courtesy of his aunt’s hand.

That did not happen that year. Instead, the door had opened without so much as a click.

He fell down to the floorboard. There was a vague shape of legs in front of his face. He flinched, mentally preparing himself for an onslaught of curse words and beatings, but none of them come.

Befuddled, he gazed upwards and squinted. A pumpkin stared back at him, its pair of red eyes shining brightly. 

The scar in his forehead throbbed.

Harry scrambled back to his cupboard and closed the door as fast as he could.

* * *

Living as a pumpkin was not the aftermath Lord Voldemort had expected when he decided to pay his supposed conqueror a visit.

It all happened so quickly: the _Avada Kedavra_ bouncing back to him, the agonising pain as his soul was torn from his form, and the numbness he felt when his wraith finally gained a body.

The pumpkin he had possessed reminded him of the ones who used to gift him with small bouts of magic, back when he was no one but an unknown orphan.

From then on, his life had turned into cycles of sprouting and rotting. He’d wake in a different household every Samhain, only to perform a ritual to make sure that he’d wake up nearer to his supposed conqueror every year.

It took him six Samhains to find the boy.

* * *

The second time it happened, he ended up having tea with the pumpkin. It introduced itself as Tom.

When Harry mentioned his name, which he had learned on his first day at school, it repeated the name a few times, its face full of bliss, as if Harry’s name was the sweetest candy that had graced its humanoid tongue.

Harry liked hearing his name uttered without a single speck of disgust.

* * *

The boy’s name tasted divine on his tongue, somehow.

* * *

It became an annual thing, talking with Tom. Every year, once the clock ticked over to midnight, Harry would focus on his magic and wish for his door to be opened. It worked every single time.

He did not know when it started, but the innocent talks over tea had somehow evolved into him laying his head on the pumpkin’s legs. They were not the comfiest pillow, but Harry did not mind. Tom’s vine hands caressing his hair had more than made up for it.

As he lay, Tom would offer what it knew of magic, which turned out was the thing his aunt and uncle referred to as _freakishness_. In return, Harry would talk about whatever that passed through his mind—the nightmares, the books he read, the latest Harry Hunting, his aunt ranting over the dead pumpkins (‘ _It’s you and your freaky hocus-pocus, isn’t it,’ she yelled, her hands clenching Harry’s collar. ‘What did you do, Freak?’_ ), the last meal he had.

He would feel Tom’s hand stop at times. When that happened, Harry would hold the hand and look up at Tom’s red eyes. ‘That’s okay,’ he would say. ‘It happens.’

* * *

He learned of the shard of his soul within the boy when he was patting the boy’s hair.

From then on, he would place a small curse on the boy’s supposed guardians before he went back to his lone patch in the garden. Enough to cause them discomfort, but nothing they would connect to his Harry.

He’d kill them like he did the other pumpkins, had he not seen the aunt taking a letter from Hogwarts’ barn owl. It would not do to alert Dumbledore so soon.

No one was allowed to put their mark on his Harry and leave unscathed.

* * *

Hogwarts happened.

Meeting Tom had been difficult, what with the living castle actively enforcing its curfew rules, but Harry had managed.

It took a little bootlicking on his part, but Hagrid, who seemed a little upset when he was sorted into Slytherin, was not exactly the most difficult person to convince. He stayed at Hagrid’s hut until the clock stroke 12, then ran to the clearing where he had planted Tom’s seed.

‘Hello, my dear.’

‘Hello, Tom.’

* * *

Infiltrating Hogwarts’ ground was nothing but a child’s play.

All he had to do was telling Harry to plant his seed on a clearing near the Forbidden Forest exactly before the first frost of autumn, and wait for the magic of the grounds to let him grow. He had found the clearing back in his first year, hiding from his housemates who hated him for his father’s surname. He stopped visiting it once he learned enough magic to fight back.

Finding it to still be deserted, despite all the decades that have passed, had given him a sense of melancholy.

* * *

In his second year, he met a girl on his way to meet Tom. She was clutching a black book in her hand, one that he felt an odd tug from. The corridor was empty otherwise—there was no one but them.

He was under his Invisibility Cloak, but her stare felt as if it had pierced through the veil.

He picked up his pace.

* * *

Possessing Harry Potter had been delightfully easy.

The boy had been pliant—it was almost as if he had put him under an Imperius. Perhaps it was due to the boy’s psyche being open to him for the last eleven years. Perhaps it was the fragment of his soul melded in his boy’s.

He was simultaneously enraged and elated when he found out that his diary was in the hands of an insignificant little girl. Enraged, because he remembered leaving it with one of his most trusted men; elated, because this meant a galloping push to his plans.

Ultimately, of course, he had gone with the latter.

It was time to revisit his ancestor’s chamber.

* * *

He woke up on a dusty leather chair. The room was dark, and he could not make out anything but the tall bookshelves surrounding him.

He felt a presence beside him. He turned around and met a pair of familiar red eyes staring back at him.

‘Tom?’

‘Hello, Harry.’

**Author's Note:**

> to be completely honest, this was not how i planned fic would be when i saw the prompt. that particular idea, sadly, died out after 596 words, and i had struggled to find a new one for the last couple of weeks. this one was written within 4 hours, a few minutes after i dropped and subsequently reclaimed the prompt. feel free to point out any mistake i made--i'll get back to it as soon as it is possible. thank you for reading!


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